San­dra L Blood

In its on­go­ing com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al her­itage and ho­n­our­ing the lega­cy of Car­ni­val icons, Beach & As­so­ciates (BA) con­tin­ues to dis­tin­guish it­self through thought­ful­ly cu­rat­ed mas pre­sen­ta­tions and ed­u­ca­tion­al work­shops.

The fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed mas or­gan­i­sa­tion is led by founder and chief ex­ec­u­tive Mor­gana Beach of Bernard Street, Mon Re­pos, San Fer­nan­do, whose four decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in Car­ni­val de­sign guides the band’s cre­ative di­rec­tion.

BA’s struc­ture re­flects its fam­i­ly-for­ward phi­los­o­phy, with co-ex­ec­u­tive Aneshia lead­ing the chil­dren’s band, civ­il en­gi­neer An­ton serv­ing as wire-ben­der, An­drea over­see­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive op­er­a­tions, and younger mem­bers of the Beach fam­i­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing as mas­quer­aders and sup­port crew.

“My mom has worked with the late, leg­endary Stephen Derek, Leslie Bobb and An­ra Bobb, among oth­ers,” Aneshia said. “As BA’s lead de­sign­er, she has helped our kid­dies band earn the NCC Mi­ni Band of the Year ti­tle in its de­but year, 2013, the Na­tion­al Band of the Year (Small) in 2024, mul­ti­ple re­gion­al wins in the large cat­e­go­ry in South Trinidad, and con­sis­tent Na­tion­al In­di­vid­ual of the Year place­ments over the past decade, in­clud­ing top-10 fin­ish­es.”

She added that the band is tak­ing an­oth­er step for­ward this year with en­tries in the Ju­nior King and Queen com­pe­ti­tions.

For Car­ni­val 2026, Beach & As­so­ciates will pay trib­ute to the late icon­ic Car­ni­val band­leader, mas mak­er and fire­fight­er from San Fer­nan­do, Mack Copeland, with a pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled Re­turn of the Mack – A Trib­ute to Mack Copeland.

The por­tray­al is di­vid­ed in­to sev­en sec­tions: Mack the Fire­man, Jo­Jo, Pageantry of Eng­lish His­to­ry, Great Faces of Africa, The Li­on of Ju­dah, The Gold­en Age of the As­syr­i­an, and The Glo­ry of the Pharaoh—each reimag­in­ing Copeland’s most cel­e­brat­ed themes and cre­ative ac­com­plish­ments.

Cur­rent­ly the largest band in south Trinidad, BA blends tra­di­tion­al crafts­man­ship with youth­ful en­er­gy, pro­duc­ing por­tray­als that are both vi­su­al­ly cap­ti­vat­ing and ed­u­ca­tion­al.

“Copeland was a vi­sion­ary, a steel­band pi­o­neer from Mon Re­pos, and his metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship, his­toric themes and un­ortho­dox de­signs in­flu­enced and en­ter­tained au­di­ences from the 1940s through the 1990s,” Aneshia not­ed.

The pre­sen­ta­tion was of­fi­cial­ly launched in Sep­tem­ber, and to en­sure his­tor­i­cal ac­cu­ra­cy and in­tegri­ty, Copeland’s son, Bri­an Copeland—for­mer prin­ci­pal of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, and in­ven­tor of the G-Pan—con­tributed re­search ma­te­r­i­al and in­sights.

“This por­tray­al mat­ters not on­ly be­cause it is nos­tal­gic, but be­cause it re­flects our cul­tur­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Aneshia said. “We are en­sur­ing that the his­to­ry of mas in the South and the cre­ative lega­cy of Mack Copeland are passed on to a new gen­er­a­tion. It al­so re­in­forces the band’s vi­sion and mis­sion.”